Bubbles. Lots of them.

Having recently returned from Houston and CERAWeek, I found myself suddenly aware of all I had missed by being immersed in what was essentially a news bubble. For those interested, one of the main headline themes that hit me on return to the UK concerned a football legend being barred from presenting the weekly football show on the BBC. At any rate, my news bubble—or lack of news bubble, really—was such that I had inhaled perspectives from across the energy industry to the exclusion of, well, just about everything else. And within the news bubble was another bubble specific to an overused phrase from the week: controlled energy transition. And another bubble involving my own unconscious bias that maintains the existing oil and gas industry as a credible, necessary and maligned player in advancement toward net zero goals by mid-century.?

And as I consider these potentially concentric bubbles, it occurs to me that as righteous as I felt last week about the industry and its role in solving the world’s greatest challenge, climate change, there could very well have been another bubble in, say, Copenhagen. And perhaps that bubble encircled, hypothetically, a conference on the anthropogenic age and the environmental catastrophe it has created. In this case, someone’s unconscious bias likely would have manifested itself in laying the principle blame for the current environmental catastrophe at the door of the fossil fuel industry. The conclusions reached in that bubble may have gone so far as to say that if the oil and gas industry is to blame for the environmental crisis, it is obviously not responsible enough to participate in correcting the problem.

The CERAWeek bubble and the theoretical Copenhagen bubble both contain research, content and perspectives in relation to the very real, major environmental challenge facing humanity. But as much as bubbles may contain things—molecules, ideas, perspectives—they also exclude things. As such, they are imperfect.?

By maintaining our bubbles—even with good intentions and enthusiasm—we miss a trick. What if we burst our bubbles and bring together both sets of protagonists? For we are indeed all protagonists in the ambition to check the damage that has been done to the environment. We might listen to each other. We might challenge each other or even downright disagree with each other. Actually, we would certainly disagree with each other on many points. But we would also have to stop talking and blaming so we might do some listening. And we would use our persuasive language rather than us/them language. And as happens at these types of events where many enthusiastic professionals gather together, acquaintances would be made, ideas would be sparked and deals would be done. Without the interference of our unconscious biases and bubbles. These are the spaces where the middle grounds lie.?

The Guardian newspaper in the UK has a weekly feature called Dining across the divide. Two individuals with often diametrically opposed views come together to listen to each other in a relaxed atmosphere. They discuss their points of view and explore subtopics that may offer opportunities to find agreement. The end result never disappoints. There are always opportunities for finding areas of mutual alignment. Burst bubbles.?

I would love to see a series of organised dinners at CERAWeek where different bubbles of bias and perspectives are brought together with the encouragement to burst their bubbles in pursuit of those spaces of middle ground. If we are to succeed in our net zero ambitions, we need to engage in different kinds of conversations with different stakeholders across all dimensions across and outside of the energy industry. It’s our only chance of creating the solutions we need to address climate crisis and ensure we are on track to meet our net zero targets. Who knows, maybe we would even get invited to continue the dialogue at my theoretical event in Copenhagen just as we have finally been invited to join the dialogue at the Conference of Parties series.?

So let’s burst a few bubbles over the next 12 months and see what we can achieve when we do.

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